Such a Popular Girl

Teen solo show is an unlikely hit and continues to tour

Playwright Joan MacLeod has often been inspired by news events. Her play Jewel is an intimate and moving portrait of a woman whose husband dies at sea in the sinking of the Ocean Ranger offshore oil rig. The Hope Slide is named for a landslide that actually happened in a Canadian town called Hope. But the news story she didn't really want to write about has become MacLeod's biggest success to date.
"I thought I was just writing about teenage friendships," says MacLeod. However, the story that eventually turned into the play The Shape of a Girl ended up incorporating elements from the true and tragic story of Reena Virk, the British Columbia teenager who was killed by other girls her own age. In MacLeod's hands, the material is delicately handled, and her story of a girl named Braidie has now seen over 30 productions and has been translated into German, Icelandic, Polish, Spanish and French.
But it's not the play MacLeod originally planned to write. "I had the character of Braidie before I had the Reena Virk angle on the play," MacLeod says. "Reena Virk died less than a year after I started to work on the story. My daughter was two, so I was working very slowly. When Reena Virk died, I paid close attention - a lot of people did - but it took me quite a few months before I realized it was something I would write about.
"I didn't want to write about it," she adds. "But when I put it together, I knew I had a play, and I knew I had the right play. It's not just about how girls support each other, but how they take each other down."
MacLeod isn't sure why or how the news stories of the day work their way into her imagination. "It's strange how some of the plays are based on something from the headlines," she muses. "It was the same with my very first play, Jewel. I paid close attention when the oil rig sank, but it took a couple of years before I knew I was going to write about it." (In that case, MacLeod thought for some time that she might be writing an opera.)
Evidently, MacLeod's feeling about the script was right; her little daughter is eight years old now, and The Shape of a Girl continues to tour to new audiences. "I hear there's a Japanese translation that might be happening," she says. "It's having a big life. Without question it's my most successful play. I'm very proud of it, because when we premiered it, they thought it would be hard to sell a solo show about a 15-year-old girl."
Green Thumb Theatre's production of The Shape of a Girl makes a limited return engagement at Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People from September 20 to 24. For tickets and information, call 416.862.2222 or visit www.lktyp.ca.

Publication Date: 2004-09-19
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4415